Coca-Cola and Baseball

The Pause That Refreshes. The Real Thing. The Best Friend Thirst Ever had.

Coca-Cola.

With slogans changing nearly every year, Coca-Cola is entrenched in American culture through a barrage of advertising campaigns, marketing strategies, and celebrity endorsements. During the height of American pride—some say jingoism— in Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” presidency, Coca-Cola plucked the country’s patriotic heartstrings in the 1980s with its Red, White & You slogan.

Naturally, baseball provides a fantastic distribution outlet for Coca-Cola to target thirsty consumers who want a cold beverage as a companion for hot dogs, Cracker Jack, and peanuts. But Coca-Cola’s relationship with baseball goes beyond exclusive pouring rights in America’s ballparks and stadia.

AT&T park in San Francisco boasts an 80-foot Coca-Cola bottle. Citi Field has Coca-Cola Corner. In Buffalo, Coca-Cola Field is the home ballpark for the Bisons, a Triple-A team in the International League. According to the Bisons web site, Coca-Cola Field has a seating capacity of 18,025. Designed by HOK Architects, Coca-Cola Field débuted in 1988. The Lehigh Valley IronPigs call Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, Pennsylvania their home.

Beyond stadium naming rights, Coca-Cola ventured into the front office with ownership of the Atlanta Crackers, a team in the Negro Leagues. The soft drink giant rescued the team from financial oblivion. Honoring its history, Coca-Cola recounts the genesis on its web site coca-colacompany.com: “When the Great Depression began, the economic slowdown hit baseball hard. The Atlanta Crackers were floundering in a sea of debt and bad management. By the end of the 1929 season, the team was sold to several local businesses, including the Atlanta Coca-Cola Bottling Company and The Coca-Cola Company. Famed golfer (and lawyer) Bobby Jones acting as vice president.”

The Crackers needed an investor with the financial strength to shoulder this financial burden. With its headquarters in Atlanta, Coca-Cola saw an opportunity, perhaps an obligation, to invest in the hometown team: “When the condition continued to worsen, Robert Woodruff, Coca-Cola’s president, stepped forward to buy the Crackers to keep the team in Atlanta.”

Coca-Cola also sweetened the investment portfolio of a baseball legend to epic proportions. As shrewd with investments as he was in the batter’s box, Ty Cobb used his frugality to launch his roster of stocks. In a 1991 Los Angeles Times article titled “A Money Player: Ty Cobb Was a Peach When It Came to Investments, Too,” Cobb’s autobiography ghostwriter Al Stump explained Cobb’s financial prowess, claiming that Cobb was worth $12.1 million when he died in July 1961. He cited a Cobb quote regarding the initial Coca-Cola investment: “For example, Coca-Cola was a new drink on the market in 1918. Wall Street didn’t think much of it. I gambled the other way with a small 300-shares buy, then with bigger buys and then Coke jumped out of sight. It brought me more than $4 million as time went by.”

A version of this article appeared on www.thesportspost.com on June 15, 2014.

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